I really want to hire Magnolia Pair http://www.magnoliapair.com/, but am uncomfortable with the terms of their contract. You have to buy all of the prints through them and they are rather expensive. They did tell me that they would give me a disc of 30 low resolution photos that I could share online. Is this a dealbreaker?

The other photographers give you the disc and rights to print what you want at the wedding. I likely won’t even get that many prints made, but for some reason it still bothers me.

@IreneG: I agree for wedding related things, including engagement sessions, the disk is typically offered at an option, and sometimes a cost adder, but it should be affordable. Boutique portrait studios typically don’t give a digital option or price them really expensive because they focus on creating unique custom products and this is why people hire them.

Elizabeth Ray – I see some basic portraiture issues like cutting off limbs, fingers, elbows in the compositions. Also, I don’t think she nailed the vintage editing style, even though I am sick of it, it doesn’t look natural to me in her versions.

Greer has like no portfolio on the website, like one image for each portrait heading. Also, there is no about page filled out. Sometimes tells me they are very new.

Thanks for your opinion. I had the same concerns about both Greer G and Elizabeth Ray.

I’m going to try to look for another photographer, but really love the photos from Magnolia Pair. I’m just trying to convince myself that it won’t matter to have the disc since it is just for my engagement photos. At least my wedding photographer will give me all of the photos and rights.

@louisianablue: It will matter if you want to make prints in the future, or if you want to share them online, create a wedding website, or use them for Save the Dates.

They are not giving you the files because they want to sell prints. Ask them how much they would sell the disk for, which would basically be what they would expect to sell in prints. Is there upfront session fee lower than the other guys?

The upfront session is actually more than the others. Magnolia Pair’s package comes with an album with 30 photos. They will give me the low res files of the 30 pictures I select for the album to share online, use on my wedding website. I’m not planning to use the photos for my save the date.

Are there any other uses for my engagement photos that I am missing? I’m trying to think about how I will use them. Mostly I want to be able to share them online with friends and family and am happy to have the album.

We used Elizabeth Ray for our engagement photos, and are 99% sure she will also do our wedding photos (we’ve only seen the sneak peek of our engagement so far and expect the rest in the next couple of weeks). She was fun to work with and went above and beyond our expectations for the photos (so far). She was also really flexible and accommodating…